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Proof that the Commodre 64 palette is far superior to the Amstrad CPC.

Started by tastefulmrship, 16:24, 13 February 16

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ZbyniuR

@ivarf - You wish, you should read more. True is C+4 can't display overscan bigger than 320x256 hires or 160x256 in multicolor or FLI. But in FLI mode can display normal MODE 0 from CPC without problem, with 121 colors, including all 27 colors from CPC.

Even old Atari XL can display MODE 0 from CPC quite good. Overscan 192x240 with 32 colors from 256, but this time some of them are not equal juicy like in CPC. (I remind CPC in mode 0 have overscan 192x272)

Both computers have bigger problems with MODE 1. 

Some FLI on C64:
Keyword Album: F/ FLI
In STARS, TREK is better than WARS.

andycadley

Quote from: ZbyniuR on 19:12, 17 February 16
@ivarf - You wish, you should read more. True is C+4 can't display overscan bigger than 320x256 hires or 160x256 in multicolor or FLI. But in FLI mode can display normal MODE 0 from CPC without problem, with 121 colors, including all 27 colors from CPC.
My understanding is that's not quite true. The Plus/4 uses an attribute system which limits you to at most 4 colours within a character cell (4*8 low res "Mode 0" style pixels) where two of those colours are shared background colours (as opposed to just one shared colour on the C64). Also it's not quite as capable at doing FLI as the C64 was, you're limiting to reloading the colour map every two lines rather than every line.

So while it has the pixel resolution and the available colours, it isn't quite flexible enough that you could definitely display any CPC Mode 0 image without modification.

MacDeath

Basically C+4 and Atari8bit are better than CPC but inferior (somewhat) to Amstrad PLUS or even perhaps Thomson MO6/TO8...
:)

So let's compare what can be (don't get me started on MSX2+ or TurboR...)

CPC and C64 are quite different, that's a fact.
But C64 is not "farely superior" concerning pure graphic capabilities...

of course you can use some Hardsprites to patch extra colours where they shouldn't be.
But really, CPC had 11 extra colours, so some hues are really better with it, picture can't really look Half grey, half too bleached...

the 3x3x3 RGB cube is the simplest yet "complete" RGB cube possible.
Also the multimode or overscan possibilities are nice, the Mode1 can actually be very well exploited as welll and really when limited to 4 colours on screen (without tricks), the full 4096 palette doesn't really matter that much.


C64 actually profits from having a very larger scene of talented peoples...
CPC scene has lazyasses like me.
;D

funnily, some japanese machines achieved some sort of 320x200x27 video mode with their 640x200x8
check NEC8008 machines, or paseopia7...

the 27 CPC palette was achieved through software management of the ditherings with the simple RGB2x2x2 basic palette in an hight rezolution mode... sort of.



basically it was the perfect palette for manga styled graphics.


to me perfect 8bit palette would be a 5x5x5 RGB cube (values, not bits).


oh course many colours would be a waste when in the bright side... but this still let a lot of possibility : the interior 3x3x3 cube is composed of Greyish things, the exterior are RGB things good on the dark, redundant on the bright, well it is an RGB cube anyway...
But you get the proper amount of whatever you need with simple 8bit video modes like CPC's ones.

or the Atari ST 512 colours palette tooo.

4096 is really the max that an 8bit computer should get anyway, its main advantage being that the 16 colours mode can get nice full 16 inks monocolours gradiants..

Would almost be achievable (sort of) with a CPC and a 16 colour Mode1... or even an 8 colour Mode1, or an 8 colour Mode2...

Because let's be honnest... 8bit machines are not supposed to be 16/32/64 bit powerhouses...

Oliver Lindau

Quote from: MacDeath on 20:29, 17 February 16
CPC and C64 are quite different, that's a fact.
But C64 is not "farely superior" concerning pure graphic capabilities...
They are totally different in a pixellers point of view.

The graphic capabilities of the CPC feel like a 16bit system to me - with lower resolution. No special restrictions, straight forward gfx mode specifications, flexible palettes with clearly defined colours. Overall super easy to learn.

C64 is more a system for explorers and Sudoku-lovers. Many differently graphics modes, each with its own restriction rules. Except standard MultiColor mode not really easy for beginners, but the system rewards precision and modesty. And thanks to pixel-shifting, underlay-sprites and a very lively demoscene there is constant evolution going on here.


Actually I do not understand why there are not more fullscreen graphics releases nowadays for the CPC. I am running a column in the German papermag 'Return' called "Pixelkunst" (pixel art) which presents 8bit fullscreen pictures (usually homebrew) with changing subjects. Each time when I am searching for adequate CPC artworks it feels like browsing a steppe compared to C64, Atari 8bit or ZX Spectrum.

MacDeath

There are few fullscreen production on CPC because theree are few production on CPC/PLUS...

Also what do you call fullscreen ?

= a one screen picture/artwork ?
= the fact you draw where there is a border supposed to be on a real device with a real monitor ?

on CPC : "fullscreen" (also called overscan) refers to the use of the border as display zone. It is a trick typical to CPC and not always easily possible on other 8bit or even 16bit systems (unless you have a monitor that can modify/magnify the picture)

last year's Reset Party produced a few fulll screens or somewhat fullscreens in full screen.

I'll repost them then :




the black column on the right must be some emulation issue... it covers the full screen on real machine.


this one is vertical full-screen... no need to always cover all the screen.


cartoonish and french, but full screen.


fullscreen again, a good fun exemple of the power of Mode1 and ditherings.



this one is mine and for Amstrad PLUS. and it is fullscreen.


modest prod from me, not really fullscreen but clearly bigger than the 320x200 "normal" setting... more like approximate 360x256

And so on I guess.

Full screen is not always used for game's intro page because it would use 2x16K banks and many game makers still aim at 464 specs aka the 64k or doom with tape...

Also when you port graphics from other systems, you cannot easily turn 320x200 sized things (or even 256x192 size) into 384x272 unless you redo almost everything.

Some composition are great with a border too.

The trick is to not get the square/rectangle border actially visible so composition must have a finish, an object floating in darkness...
(Also see Antiriad loading screen for CPC)
This is quite often used for C64 and others too...




Titus would put fullscreen intro pages on some of their GX4000 games as well...

There are many slideshows in overscan... not always great original pixel arts (often Photo slideshows, digitalised pictures and so on).

And Demoscene would quite often pulls on overscan somewhat (check the Batman Demo... you would very rarely get the border displayed)





Those can also be somewhat optimised for greenscreens sometimes...
















ukmarkh

Nobody seriously believes that the C64 had better colours or graphics than the CPC. This topic is stupid, every example i've seen just solidifies this even more.

MacDeath

Basically C64 just has more talented artists, some of them being very talented... that's all a matter of quantity.
:picard:


but really... real life world is not only greys and browns...




(ok these may have been a bit shopped... still...)

MacDeath

come on, no need to talk like that...  ::)



the thing is that all "long" ramps would often need some patches of Grey.
it is a trick of "screw colours I go for theoric long ramps and compose my picture as if I had a VGA"... basically it would look better in real monochrome on a CPC with green monitor...



here courtesy of Supersly's marvellous website "les sucres en morceau" (sugars in bits).
[attachimg=1]
Amstrad CPC - Couleurs (1 - Les couleurs du CPC)
(in french, sorry...)

On CPC we have to do the exact contrary and would use the hybrid colours : lime, seagreen, orange, Mauve, Purple, sky blue... in order to get some ramps with hue shift.

otherwise you have the straight monocolour ramps that can have 3 values :
=dark
= bright (actually medium)
= pastel (pastel red is called pink)

because CPC palette is a minimalistic yet "complete" RGB cube, the "inner cubes" are only one grey.



so you don't have greyed colours as on bigger RGB cubes.

EGA (4x4x4) has an inner cube of 2x2x2 including 2 greys and 6 greyed colours.

a 5x5x5 RGB cube would have a inner 3x3x3cube of 3 greys and 24 greyed colours... and so on.



ukmarkh

Quote from: MacDeath on 23:41, 17 February 16
come on, no need to talk like that...  ::)




That colour palette has just made me vomit! Sure, the SID is superior (although some CPC users disagree), it has amazing hardware scrolling, but I'm not convinced about the sprite capabilities. That's the C64 in nutshell, I should know, we owned both C64 and amstrad growing up. 

Shaun M. Neary

While I know nothing about the hardware end of things... but the C64 palette just made it's graphics look so drab.
If it was around today, it would be the bad instagram filter of the 8bit machines.  :laugh:
Currently playing on: 2xCPC464, 1xCPC6128, 1x464Plus, 1x6128Plus, 2xGX4000. M4 board, ZMem 1MB and still forever playing Bruce Lee.
No cheats, snapshots or emulation. I play my games as they're intended to be played. What about you?

MaV

Quote from: MacDeath on 23:06, 17 February 16but really... real life world is not only greys and browns...
It certainly is now where I live!

Also:








Here's grey and brown for you:



You southeners with 50 weeks of sun per year! Tsk, tsk, tsk! :P


Black Mesa Transit Announcement System:
"Work safe, work smart. Your future depends on it."

MacDeath

Well, we had 2 days of cold, wind and some rain... but it is getting better. Still not below 0°



lets think.

[attachimg=1]



Really the C64 is not the most close version either to the original... the one I re-coloured seems a bit more close, well it would need some extra job but it shows a different strategy than the straight conversion with palette swap only.

Oliver Lindau

@MacDeath Thanks for the screenshots. The main issue I have usually that there is a special subject (like 'Designer's Stuff', 'Year 1984' or whatever) and mostly it is like one or two CPC artworks and dozens on other machines. I refuse any pictures that are converts or could be specified as straight copies (it is not about copyright issues, but copied references are not representing creativity imo. depends on the subject though).


There have been shown some really awesome artworks already, i.e. works by Rexbeng, Jill Lawson, Marc K Jones, Stickman or Paulbrk.


But please. Stop this grey/brown-bashing and the saturation. Check out the graphics from the top CSDb artists and you will see that they do not put all of their work in brown-ish tones. It is a very dominant combination in the C64 world because yellow/red/brown cover all luma levels in the palette, but it is similar to the blue or purple on the CPC to compensate the lack of grey. And it is not the only working combination of colours.


And that low saturation level is a digital myth thanks to the RGB color range that does not cover the C64 video output (every person that is manufacturing svideo-cables can tell). It is still less saturated than CPC but way more vivid and bright like the usual VICE screenshots.

I met Made two years ago at the Revision demoparty while he was fighting with the todays common PEPTO palette (that is this RGB-basis version of C64-colours). And it was beyond his imagination why this palette is so popular. I showed him graphics on my C128D which monitor was adjusted by using an Amiga and he could not believe the difference. This is also what every oldschool pixel artist say that were used to work in the 80ies in the games industry. What you are watching on an emulator are not the same thing what you will see on a well adjusted commodore monitor. Quoting Robin Levy (who was the pixel artist in many games like Armalyte, Last Ninja 3, Hawkeye) when he saw PEPTO screenshots from his own work: "WTF is that??? my c64 never looked like that!"... I could not find better words for this.

MacDeath

yeah, basically "pixel art" was just called computer graphics and the "pixels" were never squares with sharp angles, well limited sides and regularly coloured flat surface.

nowadays, the youth would think we were looking at regular small floor tiles mosaics that could somewhat change colours...
:doh:


I totally agree with the thing on "original artworks" and not jsut convertions or tracing.
But this is where CPC doesn't have the upper hand.
Many many many more sceners on c64.
So basically more are supposed to provide original artworks.

Hence the gape in the mass of content.

Would be interesting if some C64 artist actually tried to perform on CPC.
Not quite sure they would all manage to succeed with it.
To be too specialised can be tricky when you try to break the habits.

yeah this greyish thing.

Well, the mood of the topic is "8bitwar with every lowblows" so that's it.

What would you expect with such a title of topic at CPCwiki's forum...  ;)

CPC palette or graphics wouldn't always look oversaturated if the screen was a bit adjusted and if the graphic artist would really work his palette.
Many games were ports from other systems with cheap work for both pixels or palette.

But when it was good it was good.

Should also remember that perhaps most users in some countries would have a basic TV set, not the high tech Commodore monitor that may have more settings options than a VGA screen...
Commodore monitors

Here in France the Atari 2600 could only display 8 colours... yeah really...
List of video game console palettes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
SECAM... USA faield at it...



BTW... it could be great to put this topic into another level...
by getting 2 machines beside, trying to display the same artworks.

But of course not just lazy palette swaps with big red skin...
perhaps with different screen settings as well so we could compare at last.
Could be a great Web article (with photos) or video... could even be organized at some demoparty perhaps with enough preparation.

Quotewhich monitor was adjusted by using an Amiga
how do you do that , what is this magic ?
any link ?


ukmarkh

I don't buy any of what you've just said. Forget the C128, you said C64?


I grew up with a C64 and monitor, as well as an amstrad CPC, with colour monitor, there's a difference, everyone I knew could see it, but you can't.


The CPC is superior in this department, and no amount of words or images will change that opinion, as I've looked at thousands of images and compared both, including demo's.


That's not to suggest the C64 is bad, far from it, it ruled supreme in practically every other area, especially gaming. 



Oliver Lindau


@ukmarkh
Well, actually I worked in the games industry for some years. Common job was doing 8bit ports those days. So in my office I got an Amiga and a 1084s monitor which was capable of RGB and the C64 chroma/luma signal. And right after adjusting it for the Amiga - switching to C64 (the 1084s has a button for that) the colours look bright and colourful - as if VICE emulator is set to 1.9 saturation. On a monitor that was manufactured by Commodore. Still got such a setup here and that is what I am referring to.


Btw C128 has the same colours as the C64 revisions built from about 1985. Previous series had 4 instead of 5 luma levels in the palette. C128 has RGB support, but only by using the VDC chip but not the VIC. The video output from the C64/128 did not even match standard PAL specifications (a friend of mine who is into this things specified them as PAL-Pro), so the the colours yellow and white are not covered by the RGB colour range. That's what the guy who generated the PEPTO palette did: Colour reduction till they match RGB. Kinda similar to processing graphics between RGB and CMYK.


And actually those were times where everybody was messing with front knobs on their TV and those low settings are also super-awesome for creating skin tones or Boris-Vallejo-Covers. But that was definitely not common sense, which came up in a massive diversity of palettes.

IMO neither C64 or CPC palettes are superior. Each has advantages and disadvantages, both have clearly recognizable colourschemes and none of them is suitably for every kind of graphics.


@MacDeath
Ehm... screenshots. Like those? I do not own a professional camera (tends a bit to blue undertone), but guess this is enough to see the difference.




andycadley

The Vice palette is, I think, a more realistic representation of what the C64 output looks like when you plugged it into the family telly, which was probably the most common setup. Sure you could tweak the colour settings to make it look better, but then you'd get a clip round the ear from your mum when she wanted to watch Coronation Street and everyone looked like they'd been in some horrible tanning salon accident.

enthusi

Quote from: andycadley on 09:24, 18 February 16
The Vice palette is, I think, a more realistic representation of what the C64 output looks like when you plugged it into the family telly, which was probably the most common setup.

No ;-)
Vice used to be based on pepto because in RGB space, those are at least correct (technically).
Vice has dedicated controls to set saturation-levels. Back then, I prefered rather darkish colors, but most friends had them similar to what veto posted.

Oliver Lindau

@andycadley: VICE is also a compromise and is based on PEPTO too btw. And speaking of C64pixels which is the source for the initial comparison screenshots here is based on it is the same thing with slightly more saturated colours than VICE. When Enthusi and I started the c64pixels-project we needed something in between this vast range of colour settings. As far as you are living in that microverse on a single website this works but still does not represent the outside world and is no solid basis for 1:1 comparisons with machines that are based on different video standards.

You assume that VICE represents most common setup. Relied on what basis? There was no existing reference. It was not unlikely that people were adjusting the visuals by using a FuBK test pattern without knowing how Commodore specified them (try this with CPC colours - this method is just absurd). Each monitor came up with their own factory settings and every person was messing up with them on top.

My own approach using the Amiga for calibrating is also just one way to go. It is special in a way, because it was the first Commodore computer that came up with the whole RGB spectrum in 4bit colourdepth. So you get an idea about the manufacturers video settings. But this does not replace history how kids and artists dealed with that.

What we have now is a system, where you need a resistor on video cables luma when you like to watch the original colours on todays common video hardware. And there is PEPTO, whose approach to give a physical comprohensible translation here. That combination already means that you have to adjust the video settings afterwards.



PS - referring to Enthusi: veto is my scene handle.

ukmarkh

Quote from: Oliver Lindau on 02:20, 18 February 16
@ukmarkh

IMO neither C64 or CPC palettes are superior. Each has advantages and disadvantages, both have clearly recognizable colourschemes and none of them is suitably for every kind of graphics.



If you'd have said the above, instead of "Proof that the Commodre 64 palette is far superior to the Amstrad CPC" You might not have lost your audience.


Whoever started this thread, can't even spell Commodore, so forgive me for not taking it seriously from the start. 

invent

I'm enjoying this thread a lot and appreciate everyone's thoughts and experience.


I while possibly more biased on the Amstrads more saturated colours, do enjoy working with the C64 palette and have discovered that's it's quite a nice palette to work with, of course my experimentation with the ZX Spectrum is more challenging.


The Last UFO (Amstrad game)
Mig n Ziggy (Amiga concept using C64 palette)


P.S. Yes The Last UFO has progressed more :)




Enjoying/Creating Retro Games

ivarf

Quote from: MacDeath on 23:41, 17 February 16
come on, no need to talk like that...  ::)



MacDeath, will you stop trolling. There is no way a colour palette can look so bad. There must have been a design fault or a circuit that needs repair.









Below is a palette my 2 year old created, maybe not up to pepto standard, but he is quite happy with it:

ukmarkh

Quote from: invent on 13:24, 18 February 16

P.S. Yes The Last UFO has progressed more :)


Good lad, this looks like a candidate for amstrad game of the year! It looks like the sort of game that would benefit from a bit of screen shaking, as seen in Savage, when you take a hit or something big enters the screen.

andycadley

Quote from: Oliver Lindau on 12:55, 18 February 16
You assume that VICE represents most common setup. Relied on what basis? There was no existing reference. It was not unlikely that people were adjusting the visuals by using a FuBK test pattern without knowing how Commodore specified them (try this with CPC colours - this method is just absurd). Each monitor came up with their own factory settings and every person was messing up with them on top.
Based on nothing more than it looks roughly like what most C64 machines looked like when I saw them back in the day. Most users didn't have colour calibrated monitors or even dedicated displays, they'd just get plugged directly into the family telly and wouldn't mess with the brightness/colour settings because they mostly needed the TV to look right when the family went back to watching their shows without excessive fiddling again.

Obviously none of them can be entirely "correct" as there was no one calibrated setting, but I seriously doubt more than a few C64 users ever went to anything like the lengths you're suggesting.

ukmarkh

Every person I know, who owned a C64, ran it through either a shitty black and white portable, colour portable or through the family T.V. It was and still is, widely acceptable, that the C64 colour palette was a bit shit! Those pictures presented in a few posts earlier, looked good, but slightly washed out.   

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